It was the late night or early morning of April 20th 2013, depending on how you look at it. If you look at 4:00am as the early morning, please stop reading now. The gap between our levels of understanding of the universe are so vast, you might as well be reading Japanese. I awoke, or was awoken to, by a loud clanging. A loud clanging is an embarrassing and “so not original” way to begin a story such as this, but I will remind you now and this one time only that every word I am currently typing AND every word you are currently reading is the God's honest, absolute and Almighty truth...
The loud clanging turns out to be our least beloved cat, “3”. Believe me, she has earned every ounce of effort we put into naming her. Let me go back a moment here. I promised the absolute truth and yet have already started with a small but important piece missing. At first, upon being awoken, I suspected the clanging was our Chinchilla, Dr. Pepper T. Mouse (a name he/she has earned through gallant service and entertainment to the family). I approach Dr. Mouse's cage (the irony of his/her last name only now becoming real to me) only to hear the loud clanging in the other room. And now I have ruined the suspense, but there in the darkness I see 3 dragging our 6 foot floor heater across the carpet with her paw. I, being the only sensible creature in the room, scold her and push her away, thinking that a heater is a very stupid thing to attack. Rather than retreating, she leaps back toward the heater and begins to hop around and gyrate in agitated and vicious movements usually reserved to members of the fiercest South American tribes. Then it hits me. She's not attacking the heater at all...
I lift the end of the heater a few feet in the air. There is a small section at the end, where the wiring is housed, that just so happens to be impossible for a cat to infiltrate. I imagine it is nice and warm in there. I give it a shake and... Something is alive in there. I steel my nerves and head to the garage for supplies. My initial plan is to remove the housing cover by unscrewing the single Phillips head screw to identify the intruder. Wish I had given it more thought, but I am a man and we tend to think one step at a time. This will hurt me later. To be honest, my plan was probably as follows. I open the things, the creature runs out and the cats pounce on it. They do the dirty work, I do the clean-up and we never tell a soul. Just giving each other knowing looks while we pass through the house for the rest of our lives. “Mommy can never know.”
So there I am turning the screw with two agitated felines twitching behind me. Schzung has now joined the fray and while I don't have a lot of faith in 3's abilities in... ANYTHING, Schzung could most likely survive on the Moon. But that's a different story. I remove the housing cover only to discover a new problem that causes my original plan to fall to pieces. The mouse is adorable. All of a sudden, this has become a moral dilemma. Not having time enough to explain the change of plans to the predators, Schzung pounces for the kill. The world's cutest mouse scurries through a gauntlet of razor sharp paws and gnashing teeth until finally taking refuge behind a stack of books in our entertainment center. Note to self: My cats are incapable hunters. On the plus side, I did not have to witness the grizzly killing scene while quietly consoling myself with thoughts like, “well... that's nature. A brutal struggle for life. Beautiful in it's way.” Nature of course, did not remove screw from the cover housing. I realize now, that if I hope to get any sleep tonight, I will be taking care of this problem myself.
As the cats continue their pursuit I run to grab a pair of gloves. If anyone is going to be getting this tiny creature out of our house, it is going to be me. When I return to the scene the mouse makes a break for it. The cats are useless, it has to be me. I spring toward the fleeing mouse and moments later I am looking at its little tail in my right hand. Now what? I start toward the sliding glass door. My first thought it to let it outside. To release it back into its natural habitat. But after a few steps, I pause. This little thing has invaded my house. It has put my family at risk with it's toxic feces. Rabies, Hantha Virus... Who knows what this little disease ridden filth mammal might be carrying. I should just crush its little skull. Just squeeze it in my hand with my world renowned grip strength. No... Too gruesome. I don't have it in me. Next plan. I'll put it in a container. Yes. Keep it there overnight and ask Sunny what to do in the morning. Edan will get to see a cute little mouse and then cry because she can't keep it as a pet... No. No good either. My track record for keeping creatures in containers if spotty. Remember what happened to the salamander? And the frog escaped as well. We would be back at square one. I walking up the stairs now. The container idea is denied. So what then? Flush it down the toilet, garbage disposal, suffocation? I have to either kill it, or get it far enough away from the house that it won't easily return.
Once again, my instinct to get this creature out of my house kicks in. The front door? Nowhere to put it. It will scamper into the garage and be back in the house in an hour. I'm not walking back downstairs. If Kona catches wind of this, she will only further complicate the issue. And then. It hits me. The balcony. I fight through nagging doubts as I walk purposely, nurse-like, to the sliding glass door that opens on to the balcony. With one motion I slide the door open with my left hand, rear back my right arm in a mighty recoil and let fly the mouse in a launch intended to reach the surface of the moon.s
And then. There was silence. In the far distance I see the tiny silhouette under the moonlight as the rodent floats gently down the cliff. I don't know what the terminal velocity of a mouse is. But the fall looked VERY survivable to me. So... Am I a mouse killer? Or a mouse rescuer? I'll leave it to you to decide.
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